The Monitor

Nearly all foods undergo some form of processing. Whether it’s oranges being squeezed and packaged as juice, fish being cleaned, frozen and packaged, or peanut butter being mixed and placed into containers, all food and beverage processing is required to follow good manufacturing practices (GMP) as well as additional local, national and international food safety regulations.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Bucket sampling in petrochemical refineries isn’t new, and it isn’t very effective. Bucket sampling involves an operator simply walking up to a spigot, turning it on and collecting the sample in a bucket or other container. The samples pulled from a spigot may not be fresh or representative, or they could be impacted by exterior elements like fluctuating temperatures - both of which could foul the sample. Sampling this way involves additional significant safety risks to the operator, which can cost in manpower and money. Factor in the time it takes an operator to capture a sample and the logistics involved in getting it to the lab, and soon what was thought to be an easy and cheap sampling method is anything but.

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Topics: Downstream

Running an efficient operation requires controlled, real-time data obtained through representative sampling. What exactly is representative sampling? It’s the act of capturing a limited volume of product from the process stream that accurately reflects the characteristics of the entire lot or batch – and that product can then be analyzed. Nearly any food or beverage – including solid, powder, liquid and slurry foods, beverages and pet food – can be sampled.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Over the years, I’ve had a number of conversations about sampler uptime that all basically boil down to the same question: How do we keep our samplers at 100% scheduled uptime to avoid loss of productivity and plant efficiency?

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Topics: Any Application

Running an efficient operation requires analysis of controlled, real-time data obtained through representative sampling within a production environment. This data is needed to provide the critical insights needed to control and optimize processes. Representative sampling is the act of capturing fresh product from the process stream for analysis.

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Topics: Downstream

Let’s say you have a large order for a dry powdered food product and you need to be sure the product fits the customer’s specifications before it’s shipped, or you need to keep tabs on the moisture content of your material throughout a processing run, or you need to ensure that your chemical material doesn’t rise above a certain level of volatility. To accomplish these tasks, you’ll need to accurately sample and test the material using a sampler that can enter the material stream, capture a quantity of that material, and extract a representative sample for analysis. For the most accurate and repeatable sampling, you will need to employ a sophisticated method that allows precise samples to be taken at regular intervals, leaving no room for error – an automatic sampler.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Sampling of dairy products is necessary to ensure quality, safety, and specific attributes such as butterfat content. All types of dairy – cream, milk, whey, cheese – can be sampled in their various forms, whether liquid, slurry, solid or powder.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

The answer currently is 154. The leading brand of sample coolers – Sentry – supplies more than 6,000 per year to customers around the globe.

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Topics: Power, Cement, Food & Beverage, Downstream, Mining, Upstream & Midstream, Pharmaceutical, Liquid & Slurry, Any Application, Steam & Water, Gas

As sure as a cup of morning joe, food processors need to conduct representative sampling to gain the insights they need to ensure process control and product quality and safety, and determine product characteristics. Two coffee producers recently purchased different Sentry® samplers specific to their applications to help them meet those needs.

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Topics: Food & Beverage, Solids & Powder

More and more, power plants must cycle to fill in gaps caused by disruptive power generation and in response to the need to bid on and dispatch electricity at certain times in the competitive marketplace. This means plants cycle based on demand and market prices for their energy production.

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water